Could you live without a dining table?

[87mum]

Could you live without a dining table?

Current set up is - round dining table in the living room with 4 chairs that take up a fair bit of space. It's quite compact, well the table is but the chairs don't fit store neatly under it.

We have a 6 year old with a 2nd on the way. Ideally we'd have a smaller dining table but I can't find anything that would be suitable/I like.

For those who got rid/don't have one, what do you do with your children at tea time? My 6 year old occasionally spills etc and we've always had one even though it's mostly used as a dumping ground/can be quite difficult to get into due to the location it's in.

We've tried rejigging the room but it's a weird shape and we are trying, again, to make the best of the situation.

Depends on how you interpret the word 'insist' really doesn't it?

I could easily do without the table as long as I have a desk in my room for crafting, doing paperwork, etc. In fact we have five desks in our house, with only three of us living here! But the dining table is pretty much surplus to requirements.

so essentially you have 5 tables, you just call them desks.
You just put them in different places in the house compared to the 'dining table'

So you are using a table for crafting, admin and paperwork, you just call it is desk.
The OP though doesn't (as far as I understand) have any other table or desk in the house.

So the point about needed a table is true, you have 5 of them.

Definitely not, we eat all our meals at the table. You can’t consider not having one with kids, it’ll be such a mess. It’s so nice for socialising and also helps your brain know you’ve had a meal and therefore stop being hungry.

I definitely think it's a NT thing. Seems some can't see past the end of their own nose, that all families are different and what they think is important, quite simply.... Isn't.

Forced conversation over food. My youngest would table flip if forced to listen to people talking to him while he's eating in his safe space and if anyone made any eating noises. Get the horrors at the thought.

Eating out, where there are other noises and he's a lot less likely to be interrupted is much better.

I could get rid but then where would the dog leads, post from 2 weeks ago and all the fruit go?! Ours is in the corner of the kitchen and is basically a dumping ground. The sofa takes up more room, handy for snuggling up at night with a film on the TV.

For those who don't have a table out of choice, do you never have guests round to eat either? It feels like you wouldn't be able to invite anyone round for more than a cup of tea and a biscuit on the couch? It's not like I'm always hosting elaborate dinner parties, but I take it for granted that I could give someone lunch or dinner, even if might be a bit of a squash.

Nope. I don't. We're not that type of house.

I would like to but my dining room is being used as a bedroom for my son.

Fair enough!

(I've never had a dining room either, by the way, but I appreciate that's not the only factor)

There's just absolutely no space in living room for even a small fold out.

If my son ever moves out I'll get a table then but that's years away.

I agree with all of this.

Also the point about some posters saying they don't have a "dining table" but then go on to explain all the other tables they have, under different names.

Nope, we wouldn't want people over for meals either

My friends and family are happy to come and sit on the sofa for tea and cake, though, which is what I do when I visit them.

I couldn't be without one, even though we don't eat all family meals at the dining table. If it's something like pizza, we eat it in the living room.

When DDs were small we lived in a flat that had no room for a dining table at all so we bought floor cushions and ate round the coffee table instead. It was still important family time to eat and chat together without any other distractions.

Well that rather depends on what you mean by 'other table', doesn't it? The point about having a dining table, I believe, is to eat at it. If you have a kitchen table, or an island, or a breakfast bar, and you eat at one of these, then you basically still have a dining table.

But I personally don't think that having a computer desk, or a desk covered in music equipment, or an old-fashioned bureau with a fold-down writing desk, would count as an 'other table' for the purposes of this thread. These are not relevant. The OP might have a dressing table in her bedroom, used for hair and beauty products, where she sits every morning to conduct her grooming ritual. But she's not going to sit the family round it at mealtimes, so it's not relevant.

I don't have one but I live alone. Eat off my lap but still capable of eating from a table! There's no room as it's open plan living/kitchen

Thanks for the help.
We've ordered a new table that has benches underneath like the one a pp posted.

We do fairly often, we never eat on the sofa, we use a dasktarkhwan for all our meals.

Which one did you buy? I love the oak one but it's a bit pricey for me.

Oh what is a dastarkhwan?
I am wondering if it is the same as a dastarhan which is what they use in Central Asia?

Yeah, same thing

yeah the pp who said they put floor cushions round the coffee table reminded me of a dasterhan. That is what we would do if we didn't have a table and chairs.

If I had a good sized or any kitchen table wouldn’t bother with dinning table at all

I couldn't be without mine because it's where I always sit. I've always preferred sitting on a dining chair to an armchair or sofa, so I'm always sat at the table.
One of my adult kids friends made me laugh recently when he said what he remembered most about coming to my house as a kid, was me always being sat at the table with a coffee.